Every anti-vaxxer I know has a totally different reason for ignoring their own self interest but they all seem to have one thing in common, they are absolutely

Every anti-vaxxer I know has a totally different reason for ignoring their own self interest but they all seem to have one thing in common, they are absolutely not thinking for themselves. To the last one, they all regurgitated to me something they heard from one of the various celebrities they worship. They are all sheep following one or more of the dozens of victimization cults that have become so popular over the last two decades. "We're being repressed and misled and we're fed up. We're gonna stick it to the consensus by contracting preventable diseases!" I'd actually be OK with letting Darwin run his train on those populations, if they weren't also recklessly causing the illness, disability, and death of their innocent neighbors who for age, health, or other legitimate reasons cannot get a particular vaccine. Should a child that's allergic to the MMR vaccine experience encephalitis and face possible lifelong disability or even death because his schoolmate's mom or dad worships a blathering radio host or a washed up model peddling conspiracies for profit? I suspect most of you grew up in clean western neighborhoods. I grew up with a schoolmate and a member of my household, each severely disabled by polio. They drew a short straw and weren't lucky enough to have well functioning healthcare apparatuses in their birth countries. And for that crime, they were robbed of significant bodily mobility forever. That so many in the US would have us move toward that awful state of affairs instead of away from that is disappointing but I suppose not terribly surprising. When I was younger, I thought only the simple minded were so easily conned and steered by hacks and hucksters but the last 20 years or so have demonstrated that many intelligent and educated Americans are just acutely gullible.